Regardless of which party runs the place, when the Ohio General Assembly passes a measure
unanimously, that can mean one of three things:

• The measure praises American motherhood and Old Glory.

• It beats up on something everyone despises — say, terrorism.

• Or it actually advances constructive government.

Senate Joint Resolution 6 represents that third possibility, deploying government to improve
Ohio communities. It also is a reminder of how sound state policy got fashioned before term limits
cursed the Statehouse.

SJR 6’s sponsors are Republican Sens. Kevin Bacon of Minerva Park and Gayle Manning of North
Ridgeville. The measure continues a program originated in 1987 by the late Paul E. Gillmor, an Old
Fort Republican who was then Senate president, and Youngstown Democrat Harry Meshel, then Senate
minority leader.

If on May 6 voters approve the Bacon-Manning plan, the state could sell $1.875 million in
general obligation bonds to help counties, cities, villages, townships and water and sewer
districts build roads, widen streets, install sewers and extend water lines.

The 99-member House approved the plan 90-2. Voting no were Republican Reps. John Becker of
suburban Cincinnati and Ron Hood of Ashville, members in good standing of what could be called (to
borrow a term from Britain’s parliament) the Awkward Squad. (Absent: Democrats Barbara Boyd of
Cleveland Heights, Ronald Gerberry of suburban Youngstown, Dale Mallory of Cincinnati and Debbie
Phillips of Athens, Republicans Mike Dovilla of Berea, Louis Terhar of suburban Cincinnati and Gary
Scherer of Circleville.)

So: The two parties
can come together in Columbus. But that happens less often than it did, because term
limits mean everyone is looking for his or her next job, not toward Ohio’s future. And landing a
new job — especially a patronage job — can amp up partisanship.

Consider the Statehouse in 1987, when Gillmor and Meshel originated infrastructure bonds. No
Senate president has been more widely liked than Paul Gillmor was. And no Mahoning Valley
legislator has gotten as much from Columbus for the Youngstown area as Meshel did.

That didn’t mean politics was pat-a-cake for them. Consider late 1982: Voters had just given
Meshel’s Democrats a 17-16 Senate majority. That positioned Meshel to replace Republican Gillmor as
Senate president.

But Republicans tried a Machiavellian move. They aimed to elect the late M. Morris Jackson, a
Cleveland Democrat, as Senate president. If he’d gone along — key black Democrats in Greater
Cleveland talked Jackson out of it — Republicans could have made a 17-16 Democratic Senate into a
Senate with a 17-member majority made up of one Democrat (Jackson) and 16 Republicans. (Something
like that happened in 1937 to Ohio House Republicans; a House that was 68-67 Republican ended up
with a Democratic speaker, Ashland’s J. Freer Bittinger.)

That 1982 coup attempt wasn’t ancient history five years later, in 1987. But Gillmor and Meshel
campaigned jointly and jovially — for example, on battered bridges in Columbus and Cleveland, to
highlight crumbling infrastructure — for voter approval of their bond plan.

By then, Gillmor had been a state senator for 20 years, Meshel for 16. Sure, in the knockout
game of Ohio politics, Gillmor and Meshel and their caucuses were adversaries. But time in
Statehouse office demonstrated that, in the General Assembly, politicking is as much about agreeing
as it is about arguing. Term limits deny today’s General Assembly members a fair chance to learn
that. So, but for exceptions such as the Bacon-Manning measure, term limits make politics on
Capitol Square not about making improvements, but about scoring points.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes
from Ohio University.